Sisieta's blog: New Territory

So I’m no longer phased by the logistics of juggling home life with a city career (with the help of an extremely supportive & hands on husband). As I approach the 1^st anniversary with my current firm I feel I am finally getting onto familiar ground, and hence “comfortably challenging” was my 2017 predicted caption as I enjoyed a lovely year end family break and the festivities whilst looking ahead into the new year. Now coming to the end of quarter 1, I’m naturally prompted into reflection mode (a characteristic of working in the financial industry) and see the wide disparity between my 2017 outlook and the actual reality, which is kind of bordering an illusion!

My 6yr old is going on 16 and feels like I have a new son I know nothing about, galloping to a level of maturity I don’t feel I’m yet equipped to handle. Requiring well thought out strategies, calculated responses to questions, boundary setting & resetting and constantly feeling the need for a “mummy timeout” so I can “breathe in & out”! Especially challenging was the week where his school teacher felt the need to make a note in his book every day of the week with comments like:
“Ricci isn’t sticking to the rules of the ‘you’re it’ game, he keeps ‘itting’ when the other child is at ‘home’.”.  I thought I was reading an animated film script with this one! Really? Then stop him from playing the ‘itting’ game!
“Ricci memorises the words to his spelling test and finishes when the rest of the class and the teacher are still half way through and starts to put his hands up. We’ll have to consider making his test slightly harder & longer”.  Now I would have passed this off as being clever and therefore yes, naturally challenge him more!
“Ricci strives for perfection and needs to understand that we also learn a lot by failing”. Now this doesn’t entirely resonate with me &  I can’t communicate this message to my 6yr old boy keeping a straight face because, I fear hearing future responses like “I tried but maybe next time mummy” as the norm! I want him to strive for perfection, I don’t want him to feel failing is an option but rather if the expectations aren’t attained, then be even more willing to try harder the next time! This is the message I believe & will deliver.

Lets just say reading these and providing serious responses at 8.30pm daily was taking up more of my mental space than was afforded, especially as our son only seems to have a very selective memory of his school day!  So we gladly made a school trip to agree on a suitable plan going forward. This appeared to do the trick, the book commentary suddenly stopped! Either the management strategy was extremely effective or class teacher simply wanted my full attention which I can understand because our son is the first one in when there’s hardly anyone around and the last one out when most of the school have gone. Perhaps the school wanted some reassurance that the child does have parents who do take all aspects of their parental responsibilities seriously or they simply wanted to put a face to the emails and signed forms. Whichever it is, my week would have been so much easier with so much time saved by just inviting me to a meeting in one short paragraph.

Combining this new territory of parenting with new Music & French homework(both alien subjects to me and require a lot of time translating to understand the tasks), a two and a half year old who will be joining his big brother at school in a few weeks (yet more new routines to introduce), whilst keeping pace with an increased highly innovative and evolving work environment, gives reasonable grounds to sharply rephrase my 2017 caption! I believe the “I don’t know how she does it” film with Sarah Jessica Parker holistically sums up our current season but we’ll call it “New Territory” to give us a better understanding of coping mechanisms.

On an upside, Southern Trains have seemed to be making an effort to return normal service! Which means I’ve been mostly able to predict my to & fro commuting times with at least a greater than 50% accuracy, and has helped in getting home in time to interpret behaviours and review boundaries for the following day just before bedtime!

“Challenges they say help us grow to achieve our full potential and change is just one part of the process. We’ll be so much wiser & grown up by the time we get onto the next phase”, we constantly remind ourselves as we grit our teeth through.

Sisieta is a Regulatory Risk & Compliance professional in the City with a large global financial services firm. She’s married to a supporting husband with an equally hectic career and has two boys aged 6 and 2.

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